Ashes
by MistWraith
Summary: Dean could remember even now the savage satisfaction coursing through his veins as he stood over the beast’s smoldering remains. Just until he had realized the true cost of the victory.


Disclaimer: Nothing of "Supernatural" belongs to me. If it did, Dean would never get out of bed! Warning: Character death. 

Rated: T, for a word or two.

ASHES 

It had taken three years—hard, cold, bleak years; soul-shriveling years—but they finally had their quarry cornered. After all this time, it would end here, one way or the other.

His death or theirs.

Part of the time had been spent hunting down those who could help them. The two of them knew they could not match their opponent's powers; they had to find weaponry that would work against him. And so they had sought out practitioners of the magical arts, mostly white magic though they had ventured into darker waters as well, for spells that could bind or drain—or kill—and for power-infused weaponry.

Three years ago they had believed they were finally at the end of their family's long quest. The demon that had started it all, whose slaughter of Mary Winchester had forged the weapon—the Winchester men—that would end his earthly reign of terror, was in their sights and they had vowed there would be no escape this time, unlike the first time they had believed they had it cornered.

Their vow had proven true. Dean could remember even now the savage satisfaction coursing through his veins as he stood over the beast's smoldering remains. The feeling had lasted no more than the blink of an eye.

Just until he had realized the true cost of the victory.

Sam had been struggling for some time with dealing with his growing talents and his confidence in his ability to control them had been shaken to the core by the revelation—the first time they had thought the demon was trapped in their grasp—that his powers were a "gift" from the damn demon, outwash from its attack on their family.

_Ah, damn it, Sammy, why did you listen?_

Dean knew Sam had brooded on what the younger man now saw as a dark cancer gnawing away at him. Dean had fought to bolster his brother's confidence that he could keep the darkness at bay; that he, Dean, would always be there for his baby brother; and that Sam could have every ounce of Dean's strength, heart and soul, _anything_ Sam needed, to help him keep things together.

In the end, it had not been enough.

In the end, he had failed to save the brother he had once carried from their burning home. The brother he had helped raise, that he had fussed over, dressed for school, comforted against night terrors and buffered as long as he could from the hunts that formed the boundaries of their lives.

With its final breath, the demon had loosed its most savage blow, straight at Sam. A blast of soul-destroying darkness straight from the bowels of Hell. Sam's fears had left him open to it and it had taken root and completed its mission of destruction swiftly and silently. And permanently.

Sam had fallen before the darkness, his defenses—as yet not come to their full potential—overwhelmed by the demon's malice. Nothing of the boy, the man, he once had been remained.

The demon had died, but it had left behind its heir.

Neither he nor his father had realized at first that Sam was lost to them. With animal cunning, the youngest Winchester had hidden his transformed nature from the hunters. Every now and then, Dean would catch a disturbing gleam in his brother's hazel eyes, but at second glance, the eyes would be the ones he had known so well, clear and open.

There had been unexplained deaths in places they had gone, but they had never been able to pin down the perpetrator. Until the time Dean had stumbled across the killer in the act.

The darkened alley was forever imprinted in his mind: every overflowing trash can, every piece of partially-painted over graffiti, the stink of garbage, urine, blood and terror. The dead woman lying at Sam's feet, sightless eyes open to the night sky, horror and agony writ in twisted limbs and tortured features.

And Sammy's chilling, feral smile.

Three years, and Dean still saw it every time he closed his eyes. Saw it in the raging nightmares that ensured he had never again had a full night's sleep.

Only pure dumb luck had kept him from going down before Sam's attack—part of him had marveled that Sam had not even had to move a muscle to launch the onslaught—and, wounded, he had staggered out to the main street. A police patrol car was the reason he had gotten away; Sam had not been ready to start open warfare with the local police force.

It was the last time he would see his brother, face to face.

Until today.

A burnt-out warehouse in a decaying part of an unimportant city. A fitting setting for the apocalypse. The remaining two Winchesters—the beast that wore his brother's face had long since given up any right to a name that was whispered among the dark forces with fear and loathing—walked toward the battle, shoulder to shoulder. Each carried a blessed and inscribed athamé.

Looking back, Dean would remember it all playing out as if in slow motion. Sam had been waiting for them, eyes icy. Yet the face was outwardly unchanged. Dean had aged twenty years since the day Sammy had fallen, and John Winchester had turned old and empty, one of the walking dead; Sam was a youthful as ever. He always would be.

He remembered thinking, _Evil pays, I guess, Sammy, huh?_

A swirl of freezing air had hurled him and Dad back, but Dean had started the binding spell and John had joined in almost at once. Building debris had come hurtling at them. Dean had sustained a blow to his ribs and he could see blood blossoming on his father's forehead.

They kept up the chant and the attacks began to slow, as Sam struggled with the binding, his eyes blazing, his face less and less human with each passing second. John, the aging lion on his last hunt, had fought his way to within arm's length of Sam, the athamé gripped in his right hand.

But Sam was not ready to yield—_something Winchester still left in you, bro_—and a jagged piece of wall plank struck Dean's head a glancing blow, causing him to momentarily stumble in the chant. It gave Sam the seconds he needed. Sam's face had changed back to the one so dearly loved by his father and brother, and he called out, "Dad?" in a broken voice. John, for the first—and last—time in his storied career as a hunter, hesitated and stayed his hand.

It was a fatal mistake.

Dean, rushing to pick up the chant, could hear his scream echoing inside his head. _Dad, don't! He's not our Sammy anymore!_ Horrified, he watched as John Winchester was hurled backward and onto a two-foot iron hook, a remnant of the warehouse's past, with enough force to pierce him from back to front.

The screaming in Dean's mind grew louder, but he clamped down on it. Grimly, he picked up the chant again and began to move forward. It was like fighting his way through a lake of molasses, each step a wearying struggle.

Then, suddenly, they were face to face. Sam, heavily bound at this point, turned suddenly puppy-dog eyes on him.

"Dean," he whispered, "Dean, help me. You promised."

_Dean, you were going to protect me. You said you would. You owe me._

Deep inside, a lightning bolt of pain blazed through him, but he hardened his resolve.

"I promised _Sammy_, you bastard,"—_and I will answer for it when the time comes_—"and you're not him!"

Before his feelings for his long-gone brother could trap him up, as they had his father, he struck, slamming the athamé deep into the beast's heart. A shriek of agony tore through the shell of the building and Dean knew nothing would ever block that sound from his ears; he would hear it forever.

He looked down at the motionless form at his feet, his eyes dry. He had drowned in his tears for his brother three years ago; he would shed none for the malignant being who had inhabited a form once so dearly loved.

He hurried over to his father. Blood trickled from John's mouth and his eyes seemed clouded over. Dean knew there was no aid that could save John Winchester and he choked on the ashes of his life.

"Dean." One hand feebly touched Dean's sleeve. "Is it over?"

Dean nodded mutely.

His father closed his eyes briefly. "Salt and burn," he whispered finally. Then he met his sole remaining child's eyes. "I'm so sorry, Dean. That I'm leaving you, too."

"Dad, don't say that. It's alright," Dean murmured gently, struggling past the constriction in his throat.

There was silence for a moment. Then, haltingly, "Bury me next to your Mom, Dean. Please." They were the last words John Winchester ever spoke.

Dean rested his forehead against his father's. He had believed there were no more tears left, but he was wrong. They streamed down his face as he gave voice to a howl of anguish so great that he felt, just for a moment, the universe stop in its ever-shifting cycles to listen and shiver.

He wept for his father. For poor lost Sam. For all the innocents who had died to satisfy Sam's darkness. For himself. And for the whole fucking cursed Winchester family.

He placed one arm around his father and braced the other against the wall. There was a tearing sound as he pulled his father's impaled body off the spear of iron and he winced, but he knew John Winchester was beyond such things as pain. Slinging the body over his shoulders, he carried his father to the Impala and placed him gently on the back seat. Leaning in, he whispered, "Requiescat in pacem."

Lawrence, Kansas was ten hours away. He would take his father to Missouri's house and leave the body there for Missouri to arrange the burial.

He would not be there to see his father buried. He had already mourned and said his goodbyes.

Dean walked to his father's truck and pulled out a container of salt and a five-gallon can of gasoline, and placed them in the front seat. Stopping back at the bed of the truck, he opened the secret weapons compartment. There, in pride of place, was the 1836 Colt revolver, a beautiful precision instrument of death. Now, though, it was just a well-made gun. The remaining special bullets had been expended in their two battles with the demon. He thought briefly about taking it with him, but in the end, it seemed fitting to leave it here, on the final battlefield, its hunts at an end.

Revving the engine, he powered the truck through the gaping hole that had once been the entrance to the warehouse and he parked it near Sam's body. He carefully salted the corpse and then drenched it in gasoline. He also soaked a rag and placed it in the opening to the truck's gas tank, and made a gasoline trail back to Sam. Backing away, he lit a drenched ball of rags and hurled them at Sam.

He did not even blink as the body caught fire.

Dean had already reached the Impala when the truck blew. Though the heat from the inferno blasted around him, all he felt was the iciness that had settled into the core of his being. He knew he would never be warm again.

An endless road stretched before him, dark, lonely and as cold as the pile of ashes that had once been his heart. He would continue to hunt the dark things, because to stop would be to let the darkness win. And one day, alone and unmourned, he too would fall.

On that day, he would see Sam again. At the gates of Hell, for they were both damned. Sam, because no matter how good he had been most of his life, the last three years had wiped it away in a sea of blood and fire and death. Osiris' scales were unforgiving, and Sam's heart would not weigh less than a feather.

And he? He was sure there was a special level of Hell for oath breakers who lose their brothers to the Dark Side. He had broken his promise and failed Sam.

_As long as I'm around, nothing bad is going to happen to you._

Sam had held those words as a shield against his fears, had trusted _him_ to keep Sam safe, and Dean had let his brother's soul slip through his fingers and drown in darkness.

It was only fitting then, wasn't it, that he burn alongside his brother at the end?

The warehouse was centered in his rearview mirror as he ferried John Winchester to his final resting place.

And all he could see were the flames.


End file.
